HE made his name as a businessman in the cut-throat environment of New York, buccaneering his way to a fortune through property deals.

But it may be that US President Elect Donald Trump owes his flair in the boardroom to his distant Scottish roots.

Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was born in 1912 in Tong on the Isle of Lewis, and emigrated to America where she met and married property tycoon Frederick Trump.

Read more: Donald Trump's US Election victory is a 'devastating result for the world'

While the next President may have learned a thing or two about the art of the deal at his father’s knee, he also owes a debt to his Hebridean genes, which reveal the entrepreneurial spark was passed down on his mother’s side.

Trump family legend says that Trump’s grandfather Malcolm MacLeod was a fisherman who made his living in the cold seas of the Hebrides, skippering his first boat at the age of 17.

But documents kept by the by the National Records of Scotland show he had also kept his finger in many other pies, with varied business interests on the Isle. Mr MacLeod was not only a crofter but also set up a post-office in Aird of Tong, where he is believed to be the area’s first postmaster. Another report says he later became a county councillor, foreshadowing Trump’s entry into politics, while he also ran a shop and served as the “compulsory officer” to enforce attendance at the local school.

“The Valuation Rolls show that Donald Trump may have got his entrepreneurial flair from his grandfather Malcolm MacLeod.

Read more: Donald Trump's US Election victory is a 'devastating result for the world'

“The rolls appear to be the only public record in Scotland showing that Malcolm MacLeod was not only a crofter but also set up a shop and post-office in Aird of Tong,” says the website Scotland’s People, a partnership between the National Records of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon.

However, tragedy also casts its shadow over Trump’s family tree, the records show.

The Republican frontruner’s great-grandfather drowned in a fishing accident off Lewis leaving his widow to bring up four children.

Among them was Mary MacLeod, Mr Trump’s grandmother – Malcolm’s wife – who was only one-year-old at the time of the tragedy which claimed her father Donald Smith.

Donald was lost in Broadbay, off Vatisker Point near Stornoway when a squall of wind overturned his open boat in 1868.

Leading Island genealogist Bill Lawson said: “The drowning of Donald Smith is a real family tragedy.

“It is possible Mr Trump was given his first name in his memory,”added Mr Lawson, who runs Co Leis Thu?, the Genealogy Research Service in Northton on the Isle of Harris.

Read more: Donald Trump's US Election victory is a 'devastating result for the world'

Eight years ago Trump made an emotional visit to his late mother’s humble old home and met his cousins.

But he spent just a couple of minutes at his mother’s old croft house four miles from Stornoway in 2008, after flying in on his own personal Tristar jet 30 minutes earlier.

Mr Trump said if it was not for his father his mother would have returned to Lewis.

“She would have come back, but she met a great guy in my father,” he said. “She had a great romance and a great marriage. She never lost her feeling for Scotland. She loved Lewis. She never forgot her roots.“I had a great mother who was a beautiful woman and great woman in many ways. She was a great inspiration.”